Exit Here (Crouch End)

Funeral Director(s)

Oliver Peyton OBE. Founder and director of Exit Here, Oliver arrived in the world of funerals with a fanfare of publicity when he opened his business in Chiswick High Road in 2019. The media swooped on the story of a well-known figure who had long been a leading light and pioneer in the hospitality sector stepping into the dour world of funeral directing, and there were many breathless articles about this new kid on the block ‘revolutionising the world of funerals’, or ‘putting the fun into funerals.’

The funeral sector watched warily from a distance, waiting to see whether this new business would last, or whether Exit Here was just a flash of colour and style, a sideline venture of a successful entrepreneur that wouldn’t last under the weight of grief and loss that accompanies the hard work of offering a funeral service.

Five years on, when Exit Here applied for Good Funeral Guide accreditation in 2025, it was immediately apparent that not only has this business lasted, but it has also become deeply rooted and highly respected in the community it serves. The references we sought as part of our process were among the most impressive that we have ever received; fellow professionals, peers and suppliers all wrote to praise the team at Exit Here, while many clients wrote to us at length about the superb experience they had had.

Oliver has been on quite a journey – one that began with a deeply disappointing experience when his father died suddenly. He was shocked at the lack of choice that he was offered, and the resulting funeral felt inadequate, in no way reflective of the man his father had been.

He recognised instinctively that there had to be a better way, and his years of experience in the hospitality sector spoke strongly to him that offering a funeral service was another kind of hospitality, one that was being unfulfilled by the current formulaic offering that he had experienced. A seed was sown, and the idea of creating a different kind of funeral business took hold. Oliver set about creating a funeral service of a kind that that he would have loved to have had available when he needed it. It what would take him years to bring to fruition, years of learning about the sector, finding the right premises and the right people, and then bringing all his experience and flair from his previous work into the new, fledgling business. It was a big gamble for a restaurateur!

Five years on, the investment Oliver made has paid off. Exit Here has blossomed into a beautiful and established presence, with a second branch now open in Crouch End, providing communities in both north and west London with a local, modern funeral home in their midst.

The Google reviews for Exit Here are all 5 star reviews  –  unsolicited viewpoints from people who chose Exit Here and want to share their experience. Many of the reviews mention the other members of the team who work alongside Oliver, attesting to the strength of connection and support that the writers felt. It’s a small team, but an impressive one.

Barry Pritchard DipFD is well known and highly respected in the funeral sector. He was born into a funeral directing family, and followed his grandfather and father’s footsteps by becoming an undertaker.

Barry began working in the family business as a teenager, and his career has encompassed roles in both small independent funeral businesses and large corporate ones. From working in his family business, he became a director of a large funeral company, co-founded one of the largest funeral companies in the UK and in his career he has owned independent  funeral homes in both London and Yorkshire. He’s been a mainstay of funeral directing trade associations, serving terms as President of the London Association of Funeral Directors, and National President of the National Association of Funeral Directors,  and he continues to be actively involved in promoting a positive view of the sector through his work on the NAFD Executive.

The respect that Barry has from staff working for or alongside him is born from the fact that funeral directing is in his blood, and that service to bereaved people  is what motivates him. His standards are impeccable – he can spot an unpolished patch on a funeral vehicle at 100 metres – but rather than finding a member of staff to tell to clean it, Barry’s response is to grab a cloth and do it himself rather than let a car go out looking anything less than perfect. His warm personality and kind nature instantly puts people at ease, giving bereaved clients a solid sense of being in safe hands – decades of organising and conducting funerals mean that he has a wealth of experience that he brings to the company.

When he was looking for people to work alongside him, Oliver recognised how great an asset Barry would be, “I basically doorstepped him for three years”, he says. It’s clear that Barry is very happy to be part of Exit Here too, he’s returned to his roots of being a hands-on funeral director while also being an integral part of a business bringing an innovative, different approach to funerals

Sam Gage is another huge asset to the team. In a quieter way, she is also highly regarded in the sector,  and her calm, creative manner and approach is  a perfect fit. She grew up next to a cemetery and always wanted to work in the world of funerals, although her career has previously spanned working in fashion and retail. Sam joined a small independent funeral company in 2018, and learned the craft of undertaking from one of the nicest, most experienced funeral directors in the business, before taking up a role at Exit Here in 2021. As with Barry, Sam’s love for her work is visible, she sees her role as a huge privilege, and the fullness of the service that Exit Here offers suits her well, enabling really strong connections with clients who want this. Sam is based at the Chiswick branch, although she spends time at Crouch End regularly.

Charlene Azille, the funeral director at the Crouch End branch of Exit Here was also ‘doorstepped’ by Oliver, who found her working in a branch of a corporate funeral business literally over the road from what was to become Exit Here’s second branch. Oliver offered Charlene the opportunity to work in a different way while still serving her community as a funeral director, and she hasn’t looked back since making the move. She is immensely likeable, her love for her work and for the families she works with shines through in her enthusiasm when she talks about what she does, and the ability to support clients throughout the whole experience, offering hospitality and event management as well as the practical aspects of arranging a funeral is clearly a real enhancement of her role.

Camelia Zarazalin is the Exit Here funeral assistant and practical lead – she’s been with the team since November 2023 having previously come from a hospitality background working as a pastry chef. Her move into the world of funerals from the world of baking and cupcakes is not a traditional career move, but she has clearly found herself a perfect role where her skills with people are appreciated and put to good use.

Jenny Jawa has been with Exit Here since it began. A qualified chartered accountant who had worked for major banks  in Adelaide and London, Jenny’s children attended school with Oliver’s children, so she heard about his plans to open a funeral home while he was developing them. Her skills with finances meant that she initially came  on board to deal with all the  financial matters, but her role has evolved  to become general manager ‘of everything that isn’t a funeral’. Inevitably though, with such a small team, she is also now an experienced funeral arranger and client services manager.

Other staff are brought in as and when required to support on funerals and assist with practical care, but funerals will always be arranged and carried out by one of the key team members.

Specific Gravity

Having arrived on the scene with a fanfare in 2019, accompanied by much media acclaim as being a ‘disruptor’, Exit Here has matured into a seriously impressive, solid, progressive funeral business, one that offers beauty, value and genuinely exceptional support and care.

Much of this must be credited to Oliver, whose vision of a full-service funeral business has come to life, despite the arrival of a global pandemic shortly after opening. He knows what he is doing, he knew his experience in offering superb hospitality could be put to use to create a funeral home  that would fulfil the needs that hadn’t been met when he had to arrange his father’s funeral and he had the determination to persevere, to find the exact right team of people to surround himself with, and to create a company that was everything he wanted to see in a funeral business.

It is evident that doing this work has profoundly impacted Oliver – he is immersed in it, connected to it, dedicated to it even. What impressed us – and some of those who sent us references – was this personal involvement, his connection with bereaved people, his hand-on engagement. It would be easy for a well-known, celebrity owner of a funeral business to be arms-length, to leave a team of staff to run it the way they wanted, but this is not what has happened here. Oliver is part of the fabric of Exit Here; no matter the size or scale of a funeral, he treats all clients with the same dedication, respect and service. If someone dies at home, it may be Oliver who comes to collect them along with another team member  (there will always be one of the four funeral directors). If it’s Oliver who you meet first when you go into Exit Here  to talk about funeral  arrangements, then he will endeavour to be the person you see throughout your experience with them. He works alongside Barry, Sam, Camelia and Charlene in the mortuary. This is not arms-length, it’s fully hands-on.

What’s Important?

Real emotional intelligence. This underpins everything about Exit Here, and is evidenced by the embedded understanding and awareness that a funeral is all about hospitality, that every bereaved person is different, with different needs, that everyone deserves personal, individual and unique attention, that everyone who has died deserves the utmost dignity, respect and care, that beautiful surroundings can have a positive, beneficial impact, that there are limitless possibilities to what can be offered, that professional standards have to be absolutely impeccable (because these reflect the underpinning values which inform the approach to both those who have died and those who are bereaved).

Everything about the Exit Here approach to funerals is imbued with awareness and intent, drawn from the exceptional combined skills that the team have brought to their work and utilising their previous experiences from many sectors. The result is a superb, high class, deeply intelligent way of doing funerals.

As you would expect, with the high standards that both Oliver and Barry bring to their work, the operational side of things is also exceptionally good. Clients’  needs are their priority, and they will happily facilitate evening or weekend visits (or funerals).  They always ask for a photo of the person who has died during the first meeting with a client,  they see this as an important step in getting to know the person in their care. The standards of care for people who have died is something they pride themselves on, they bathe and wash the hair of everyone brought into their care, applying moisturiser and checking on each person daily.

Once someone is in the care of Exit Here, they will stay at the branch, in the bespoke mortuary on the premises, not leaving until the day of the funeral.* There is great comfort for some clients to know that their person has been taken  somewhere local and that they are being looked after by kind people.

*Obviously if you want to spend time with your person, they will be brought into the visiting room at the branch, but they’ll be returned to the mortuary afterwards

What’s Different?

The immediate difference that you will notice about Exit Here is their style. From the font used on the frontages of the branches, the classy blinds, the huge windows with minimalist displays of bespoke urns and their own unique hand-painted Day of the Dead casket, the artwork on their walls*, the modern décor and furnishings, the pale wooden floors, the tailored, navy blue Savile Row suits worn by their bearers, the bespoke made-to-measure suits of the funeral directors – everything is elegant and tasteful. Everything is intentional and thought through. Everything says modernity, professionalism and style.

*The beautiful premises look so much like art galleries that, from time to time, passers-by have wandered in to look at the art on the walls, not realising that they are walking into an undertakers!!

The stylish exterior and appearance of Exit Here is reinforced and emphasised in the services available to you; the attention to detail extends throughout your interaction with them, and the help they can provide you with if you want. One of the testimonials we received illustrates this perfectly:

‘I will always be grateful to them for the exceptional care and attention that they brought to every step of my husband\’s ceremony. They were meticulous in their offering of information, advice and support. Above this was their very personal listening and true desire to be guided by my wishes to honour my husband and how this translated into the venue we used, the creation of the orders of service, the flowers, his coffin… I could list many more aspects but in short, everything was done superbly well and with deep kindness.  I felt that I had extended my family to include knowledgeable professionals who gave every detail a kind of loving attention that I hadn\’t expected.’

Services

• Your first call will be answered by primarily Sam Gage (at Chiswick) or Charlene Azille (at Crouch End) but you may speak to Oliver or to Camelia. The four also share responsibility for answering calls out of hours.
• Home visits: Always offered and happy to come to you if you’d prefer.
• Family participation: Highly valued and encouraged. You will be invited to be involved in whatever aspects you want to take part in, such as helping to wash and dress your person (if this is appropriate or possible), decorating the coffin, creating an order of service, hosting a small get-together with friends and family with the coffin before the funeral, walking ahead of or with the hearse, travelling in the hearse, carrying the coffin, leading the ceremony yourselves, and so on.
• Same sex person to wash and dress: Yes absolutely. Just mention this if it’s important to you.
• Embalming: Not routinely offered other than where required for repatriation, but happy to discuss it if you want to, or if they feel it would be beneficial for visiting purposes, or if there is to be an extended open coffin time on the day of the funeral. They will gladly (and sensitively) provide a full explanation of the process involved if you want them to.
• Ethnic specialism: Exit Here have a broad knowledge of funeral requirements for all cultural and ethnic groups. Since opening in 2019, they have arranged and conducted more than 500 funerals, including secular, Church Of England, Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Buddhist, Hindu, Greek Orthodox, Sikh, Muslim, Lebanese Orthodox, Liberal Judaism and multifaith events.
• Home arranged funerals: Happy to support any clients who want to do all or part of the work usually carried out by a funeral director.
• Local celebrants: Exit Here can recommend a number of local celebrants, all of whom they have confidence in having interviewed them and observed their work. After learning from you about the person who has died, and through listening to what you want the ceremony to be like, they will usually suggest two or three celebrants that they think will be a good fit; they’ll tell you about them and give you their website and contact details so you can have a look and decide for yourself if any of them are suitable. If not, they’ll keep looking for you until they find the right person.
• Vehicles: Navy-blue Mercedes hearse, and a navy-blue Mercedes Vito private ambulance. They can offer a black hearse if preferred, and the full range of alternative hearses (at an additional cost)
• Website: Lovely website. Clear and informative, easy to navigate and reflects the look and feel of the business.
• Client support: Both throughout the process of arranging and organising a funeral, with the support offered to arrange a reception or gathering afterwards, and also through the ongoing support for bereaved people with monthly bereavement group coffee mornings and breathwork for grief sessions, both free to attend and open to anyone who has been bereaved.
• Money matters: Transparent and open about pricing, with three options clearly shown on the website and outside their premises so that this information can be obtained without needing to ask. Their 2025 price for an unattended cremation is £1,750 (all inclusive), for an early morning  cremation is  £2,300 (all inclusive) and for a bespoke service £2,500 plus choices of various elements. See their prices page for details. Nowhere near as expensive as the quality of their work and their premises might suggest.
• Parking: On street parking with parking meters at both branches.

Remarks

Exit Here is a life-affirming, creative, collaborative funeral company that is changing the landscape of funerals.

Modern, progressive and thoughtful in its approach, Exit Here sets a high standard, with aesthetically beautiful premises, skilled and intuitive staff and exceptional care of people who have died, as well as those who are bereaved.

We asked Oliver who he most admired or aspired to be like in his work, and despite all the many influential and successful people he will have encountered over his 40+ years in the hospitality industry, his answer speaks volumes:

“Without question, it is my mother, Mary Peyton. A woman from a very poor background who ran multiple businesses in  order to give my sisters and I the best opportunities in life. She taught us how to be free, strong and independent human beings, whilst giving us a strong moral compass. I am forever thankful to her.”

Having got to know Oliver and his colleagues, and examined their way of working, we can attest that the influence of his mother, combined with the awful experience of his father’s funeral, have resulted in something very special indeed; the creation of a funeral service that is firmly rooted in the community it serves, and that provides exceptional value for anyone who chooses it.

We are delighted to include Exit Here as one of the Good Funeral Guide Recommended funeral directors.